I have (though not recently). Leviticus, Chapter 18 lays out specific rules for sexual behavior.

Leviticus, chapter 18 lays out specific rules for sexual behavior. One of those rules is verse 18:While your wife is still living you shall not marry her sister as her rival and have intercourse with her.

Where exactly is the command?

My understanding is not that he commanded it, but rather he allowed it... and in allowing it commanded that all wives be treated equally... do not give food to one at the expense of the other, etc.

In Matthew, Jesus explains marriage and divorce... Matthew 19:8 He said to them, “Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.

Before explaining divorce, Jesus explains how a man and a woman are joined together into one flesh and that is why a man leaves his mother to go to his wife.' How can a man be joined together with multiple women? One man cannot be joined together with multiple women and be one flesh with each. This is impossible.

Just like there was an "allowance" for divorce, there was an "allowance" for polygamy.

When brethren dwell together, and one of them dieth without children, the wife of the deceased shall not marry to another: but his brother shall take her, and raise up seed for his brother: And the first son he shall have of her he shall call by his name, that his name be not abolished out of Israel.

When brethren dwell together, and one of them dieth without children, the wife of the deceased shall not marry to another: but his brother shall take her, and raise up seed for his brother: And the first son he shall have of her he shall call by his name, that his name be not abolished out of Israel.

This kind of marriage was not the same as the sacrament of marriage. It was meant to provide for the widow and any children or other possessions that the deceased brother may have had. This was not the marriage that Jesus elevated to a sacrament.

I know you kept saying a "levirate marriage" was commanded by God but it wasn't clicking by what that meant. It was not meant to join the wife to the brother but rather to ensure the widow was provided for by the tribe.

When others throughout the Bible took more than one wife, it was not the widow of their brother. It was additional wives and was sinful... and not ok with God.

It was a natural, not sacramental marriage, but then there were no sacramental marriages at the time.

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It was meant to provide for the widow and any children or other possessions that the deceased brother may have had.

No, it is not that. The living brother was to marry the deceased brother's childless widow and raise up the children they had as if they were the deceased brother's. So yes, it is a real marriage with marital relations, etc.

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It was not meant to join the wife to the brother but rather to ensure the widow was provided for by the tribe.

No, it was more than that.

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When others throughout the Bible took more than one wife, it was not the widow of their brother. It was additional wives and was sinful... and not ok with God.

You are quite wrong about that as the quote from St. Thomas above shows. It was not sinful.

When brethren dwell together, and one of them dieth without children, the wife of the deceased shall not marry to another: but his brother shall take her, and raise up seed for his brother: And the first son he shall have of her he shall call by his name, that his name be not abolished out of Israel.

This kind of marriage was not the same as the sacrament of marriage. It was meant to provide for the widow and any children or other possessions that the deceased brother may have had. This was not the marriage that Jesus elevated to a sacrament.

I know you kept saying a "levirate marriage" was commanded by God but it wasn't clicking by what that meant. It was not meant to join the wife to the brother but rather to ensure the widow was provided for by the tribe.

When others throughout the Bible took more than one wife, it was not the widow of their brother. It was additional wives and was sinful... and not ok with God.

Lisa

Even the Jews of today do not understand what a lot of Leviticus is saying. Look at the feast when they are to sound the Shofar. They have no idea what the sequence is, so they do all sequences they know of, so as not to mess up. I have a lot of courses by Jewish Rabbis on Scripture and tradition for the Jewish faith. Do we know that the Leverite marriages were still to be done if the brothers were married? Also, there are the other times that this law is referenced, and in those references, it is presumed that the brothers were not otherwise married. So, you tell me, with certainty, that it was to be done with polygamy? I call BS. It also makes Jesus a liar. When He teaches what marriage is in the eyes of God, He is clear, very clear. To say that God commanded polygamy is to say that God commanded men to oppose God's law.

_________________Through the Sorrowful Passion of Jesus, have Mercy on us, and on the whole world...

Lisa - While it is difficult to wrap our heads around, it was not sinful. It was permitted and was not sinful.

Right. Otherwise you have to say that all the holy patriarches are rotting in hell, St. Paul is a liar, not a single Church father knew squat, not any of the medievals, including Aquinas, ad nauseam. Oh and you have to reject the Old Testament (or at least part of it) as a product from Satan, as David pointed out, multiple marriages are commanded in certain cases.

The law does command a king not to have too many wives. The prohibition is not on having more than one, but too great a number. This supports St. Thomas (which knew the whole scripture by heart mind you), that whily polygamy weakens the unitive aspect, it does not destroy it necessarily. But at a certain point, too many wifes would exclude a truly common life and support.

God allowed more than one wife means it was not a sin. God allows us to sin is an equivocation on allow, meaning He let's it happen

God allows us to eat pig now. God allows us to commit adultery. Do you see the equivocation there?

I don't know where your error is coming from, whether from an anachronistic projection of the sacrament of marriage onto the Old Testament. See divorce and polygamy were no sin. Heck even now divorce is possible in natural marriages (which are real marriages). and even in sacramental marriages that are ratified (ratum) and not consummate (non-consummatum).

As St. Thomas explains, neither divorce nor polygamy was allowed prior to original sin. God, whose order the natural law partakes in, can dispense from secondary precepts of the natural law and did in both these cases. Heck he even allowed (meaning it was legit) marriage between siblings, which is certainly against the secondary precepts on the natural law and is the closest you can get to intrinsically evil in all times and places without getting there.

The natural law is human reason's grasping the good, and our proper ends, and dictating what must be done or avoided in order to obtain our proper ends. Some of that means certain things are always evil. But a lot of it means many things are almost always evil, but not always, such as marriage between siblings. The order we partake in demanded that until human society had grown sufficiently such that affections could be unmixed, and such that bonds needed to be cast out further throuh marriage. Likewise, God permitted polygamy at a time when Israel was tiny and needed to grow from a handful of people to a large nation. At a time when many men were killed and there were more women then men. And he allowed divorce knowing that the hardness of the hearts prevented ther good being obtained in a pristine marriage.

Remember when St Paul said in his letter to Timothy that a deacon is to be the husband of only one wife. That means in the early Church, there were men with more than one wife.

Pagans with more than one wife when they converted maybe, but the Church has never permitted or allowed polygamy....if he was already in a plural marriage before he converted the Church did not demand he end the marriage, after all he had given his vow and everything, but unmarried Christians have never been allowed to enter polygamous unions

_________________"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and they deserve to get it good and hard" HL Mencken

Remember when St Paul said in his letter to Timothy that a deacon is to be the husband of only one wife. That means in the early Church, there were men with more than one wife.

Pagans with more than one wife when they converted maybe, but the Church has never permitted or allowed polygamy....if he was already in a plural marriage before he converted the Church did not demand he end the marriage, after all he had given his vow and everything, but unmarried Christians have never been allowed to enter polygamous unions

Both Doom and Kelly are also overlooking another more likely interpretation of the one-wife restriction for some church officials according to the Pastoral Epistles. The texts may be forbidding a second marriage for a widower.

The church, in general, has allowed another marriage if the previous spouse has died. This is, in effect, a serial polygamy (multiple successive spouses, even for women!). However, the church has tended to discourage such a practice, both for widowers and widows..

Remember when St Paul said in his letter to Timothy that a deacon is to be the husband of only one wife. That means in the early Church, there were men with more than one wife.

I think that verse is a little more complicated, since it refers to not only simultaneous bigamy but serial bigamy as well. The early witness of the Church was that upon baptism all had to give up multiple wives, though as late as Jerome it appears that polygamy prior to baptism was still looked at as valid

1 Tim 3:12 and 1 Tim 3:2 (on bishops and priests) is usually taken to refer to the irregularity of bigamy. I marry, my wife dies, I remarry, my 2nd wife dies...I coulud not be come a priest. See even sucessive marriages is bigamy (successive as opposed to simultaneous)

This is not just the medieval understanding, but that of the Fathers as well. The only disagreement being whether marriages prior to baptism counted. It is a strange thing that an irregularity for Holy Orders that stems from the 1st century no longer exists as of 1983

And therefore he first places what pertains to chastity, saying "a man of one wife." Likewise in Titus I. But in this there is seen a disagreement between Augustine and Jerome.

For Jerome says that this is understood after Baptism, since if before baptism a man had had two wives, or one first, and the other afterward, he is not impeded from ordination, since through baptism all is wiped away.

Augustine and Ambrose say otherwise, since whether before or after, if a man had two wives, he is not ordained.

But does not Baptism wipe away all things? I respond, yes in respect to sins, but no in respect to irregularity, which at times is incurred without any sin from ecclesiatical institution alone. But marriage is not a sin even among Pagans.

But what is the cause of this institution? Does it not rather impede he who has many concubines? I respond. It must be said that this is made not because of incontinence only, but because of the representation of the sacrament, since the spouse of the Church is Christ and the Church is one, "one is my turtle-dove." (Canticles 5) [Taken from St. Thomas Aquinas, In I Tim, cap. 1, lec. 1]

Note that a man who is married, commits adultery numerous times, and whose wife dies, did not incur the irregularity of bigamy. As far as that when he could be ordained (if his sin was notorious then there was another irregularity though)

The[1] husband of one wife. It does not signify, that to be a bishop or priest he must be a married man; nor that he must be a man who has but one wife at a time; but that he must be a man who has never been married but once, or to one wife: because to be married more than once, was looked upon as a mark of too great an inclination to sensual pleasures. It is true, at that time a man might be chosen to be a bishop or priest whose wife was living, but from that time he was to live with her as with a sister. This St. Jerome testifies as to the discipline of the Latin Church. (Witham) --- The meaning is not that every bishop should have a wife, (for St. Paul himself had none) but that no one should be admitted to the holy orders of bishop, priest, or deacon, who had been married more than once. (Challoner)